Before He Finds Her (30 page)

She perused the vending machine’s sad offerings and wondered if she could have a pizza delivered to her room.

She missed Aunt Kendra’s garlic cheese toast. She missed Uncle Wayne’s Western omelets, which usually ended up being scrambled eggs after the flip had failed. It’d been three days since leaving home. She missed Phillip. How comforting, that lone night spent in his bed. Alone in her hotel room with the too-large bed and the smell of industrial cleaning products, it was easy to feel lost and hopeless.

She was exhausted, and pizza would take too long, so she settled for a bag of corn chips and a Snickers bar.

Back in her room, she opened the chips, which were stale. It felt like a personal insult. She dropped the bag into the trash can, and before allowing herself any time for second-guessing, she picked up the phone in her room and dialed Phillip’s cell. She didn’t know if he’d pick up, seeing the unfamiliar number, but he did.

“It’s me,” she said nervously. “Melanie.” He might not want to talk to her, she now realized. She’d walked out on him, hadn’t she?

“Melanie—where are you? Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. I’m fine,” she said, because now she was.

She told him the truth: She’d returned to Silver Bay to find her father. She refused to live in hiding any longer, and she absolutely refused to raise a child in hiding.

She told some half-truths: She was gathering leads, making progress.

She told an outright lie: No, I don’t want you coming here. I want to do this alone.

They talked for thirty minutes—about what? She had no idea. The point was to hear his voice, bridge the distance. Before hanging up, she demanded that he keep her whereabouts a secret, and after a brief debate (
Your aunt and uncle, Melanie. They must be going crazy
) he relented.

She had lied and half-lied to Phillip, but she couldn’t lie to herself, and when she hung up the phone (both of them having said
I miss you
but lacking the guts to say any more) she felt lonelier than before. What was she actually accomplishing, being here? David had agreed to help find her father, but what did that mean, exactly? How would he go about it? And how assertively, given how little he wanted to be reminded of the past?

But these were tomorrow’s problems. She still hadn’t eaten. She should have ordered the damn pizza. She ate the Snickers bar, brushed her teeth, and went to sleep.

She’d forgotten to draw the hotel room’s heavy shades before going to bed and woke up at 6:30 a.m. to soft natural light and the awareness that her anxieties had eased overnight. Phillip had been relieved, even happy, to hear from her. And David knowing her secret, even that felt okay. Pretty good, actually. Melanie felt lighter. Someone else just knowing she was alive made her feel more alive. Not only someone else—a man with connections. A man who could get things done, if he had a mind to.

Anyway, there was no choice now but to trust him.

Her plan for the morning was to visit Arthur, see about Eric’s statement that he knew why her father had thrown the party. Maybe look into why Eric no longer worked outdoors as a lineman—whether it was his health or his proselytizing or something else. Also, she wanted to learn what Arthur knew about the Monmouth Truck Lot. That was where her father had sold his truck just two days before the murder. She found that fact especially chilling. No one had been able to make a connection between the truck sale on Friday and the murder on Sunday, but surely it meant that he knew he wouldn’t be returning to work. She wanted to see if anyone from the truck lot was still around. If they remembered her father. After a good night’s sleep, she was feeling more optimistic. She was feeling more sleuth-y. More Nancy Drew-y.

But before any of that, before Arthur or the truck lot, she’d have an actual breakfast. She wanted bacon and eggs. (Why all the bacon suddenly? she wondered. Pregnancy was weird.) And if they had them, grits. A tall glass of orange juice. And she was willing to brave the smell of coffee to get it.

And that’s what was on her mind—bacon, eggs—when she walked out of her room a few minutes after 7 a.m. and pulled the door closed. It had just clicked shut when she felt herself being grabbed from behind and mashed against the door, hard enough for her head to thud loudly and for the wind to get knocked out of her.

“
Not a fucking word
,” came a man’s voice behind her, low and breathy.

Her wrists were suddenly clamped in his hands, and his body—it was definitely a he—pressed against her from behind, crushing her against the door, against the sharp doorknob. She couldn’t move and didn’t dare to, couldn’t see anything besides the white door in front of her.

She tried to catch her breath but could only gasp.

“Drop all this.” So softly, his voice, lips grazing her ear. “Go away and never come back—or you’re so fucking dead.” He pressed her even harder into the door—forcing a grunt from her. “Now count to fifty before turning around. And
don’t
rush it.”

She felt her wrists being released. The weight against her body removed. She wanted to drop down to the carpet but willed her legs to keep supporting her. She heard the man running toward the end of the building, toward the exit.

Pain in her stomach, from the doorknob.

Bruised, for sure. She wasn’t counting to fifty. She was thinking:
My baby
. And as the man neared the exit, she turned her head. She had to. It might be the only time she ever saw her father.

There wasn’t much to see. Long gray coat with the collar turned up and a baseball cap. From behind, he could have been any tall man at all who kept his black shoes freshly polished.

In the hotel bathroom’s mirror, shirt lifted, she was horrified by the wide purple bruise from the doorknob. She touched several spots on her side and abdomen, wincing.

Then she was in her car, driving fast.

Then she was in the elevator, then hurrying to Arthur Good-ale’s room, a nurse she didn’t recognize trailing her, saying, “You can’t just... excuse me, you have to let me...”

His door was open, and she barged in. The room was empty.

When she spun around, the nurse was right behind her.

“Where is he?” Melanie heard the panic in her own voice. She already knew the answer. “Where’s Arthur?”

“Miss, are you all right?” The nurse went to take Melanie’s arm, but Melanie yanked it away.

“Tell me where he is!” But she knew.

“Let’s just calm down a minute. Catch your breath, and tell me who you are.”

“I’m Arthur’s friend,” Melanie said, “and I want to know where the hell he is.”

The nurse sighed and pursed her narrow lips, as if Melanie’s directness were the problem.

“Downstairs,” the nurse said.

“No,” Melanie said. “I’m not going anywhere until—”

“Mr. Goodale is downstairs. He didn’t need to be in critical care any longer. You can check with the front desk for his room number. But your head is contused—what happened?”

“You mean he’s okay?”

“Mr. Goodale? Yeah, he’s okay.”

And then Melanie ignored some words the nurse had to say about her needing medical attention. She hurried back to the ele-vator, which couldn’t arrive fast enough.

More concern in the face of the woman working the hospital front desk, but she gave Melanie Arthur’s room and instructions for finding it. Melanie rushed down the hallway, nearly slipping once. The door to Arthur’s door was partly open. She rushed in and, seeing him there, felt such relief that she wanted to throw her arms around him.

“Alice!” He looked up from a magazine and smiled as if they were old friends reunited. Then: “My God, what happened?”

Seeing his face and hearing the worry in his voice made her start to cry. The room was larger than the one upstairs, or maybe it only looked that way because there was less equipment filling it up. Outside the window was blue sky, rather than a brick wall, but the sunlight streaming into the room felt oppressive and blinding. She spotted the chair near his bed and slumped into it.

“Alice,” he said, “your head...”

Why was everyone carrying on about her head? In the hotel mirror, she’d looked nowhere but her stomach. Why in the world would she look anywhere but her stomach? She touched her forehead now and winced at the sting and by the size of the lump. The room started to spin around her. She gripped the chair’s arms for support.

“Alice?”

Her heart raced. The room spun harder: the window, the walls, the ceiling, the bed. She sought and found Arthur’s eyes, and stayed locked on them.

“Alice, please—”

The churning in her gut frightened her—it wasn’t morning sickness, she felt sure of it—and she remained focused on Arthur’s blue eyes as she blurted out, “David Magruder’s driver attacked me, and my baby might be dead, and my boyfriend doesn’t know about any of it, and I miss my aunt and uncle, and I want to go home, and I’m Meg Miller.”

She had never enjoyed food as much as she was enjoying the sandwich that had been delivered on a green plastic tray, placed on a table that rolled right up to her hospital bed. Chicken salad, fresh romaine lettuce, slices of summer tomato, not too much mayonnaise, soft potato bread.

“You need to eat better,” the doctor told Melanie when all the scans and tests were done, and she had heard a sampling of Melanie’s meals over the past week. The doctor, a middle-aged woman wearing green scrubs, no-nonsense glasses, and a stethoscope around her neck like a scarf, sat on a stool beside Melanie’s raised hospital bed while Melanie felt vaguely annoyed at the doctor for pestering her with questions when there was this amazing sandwich to be eaten. “I’m talking about actual meals, not junk from vending machines. The way you’ve been eating, you easily could have ended up here even if you hadn’t been attacked.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Melanie said, and took another bite.

“Before you’re discharged, we’ll give you some pamphlets about nutrition for pregnant women.”

“But the baby is okay?”

“Yes—but you have to take care of yourself. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you’re invincible.” She kept looking at Melanie for a moment, letting the words settle. “Speaking of which, a police officer will be coming by your room shortly.”

She imagined her statement:
I got shoved up against a door by a man who might have been David Magruder’s driver.
It would lead to nothing and only make her presence in this town more public. The police have never been helpful, she reminded herself.

“I don’t want to talk to any police.”

The doctor sighed. “Why not take a few minutes to think about it.”

“I don’t need a few minutes.”

The doctor shook her head. “This is very frustrating—it happens too often.”

“Ma’am?”

“A young woman gets beaten up and feels she has to defend her attacker. Especially when it’s a boyfriend or a—”

“It wasn’t my boyfriend.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“My boyfriend is a gentleman.”

The doctor nodded. “You can refuse to make a statement to the officer if you must. But then I’d like a social worker to speak with you before you’re discharged.”

“Why?”

“She can give you important information about available resources: counseling, prenatal guidance...” She lowered her voice. “Safe houses.”

“What’s that?”

“Places where women can go and live for a while to get away from... whoever it is they fear.” The doctor eyed Melanie as if they both understood. “The woman can feel safe, knowing she can’t be found. It’s all very tightly run—even I don’t know where the safe houses are located.” The doctor smiled as if Melanie would find the idea of disappearing relieving, even wonderful.

Why is the answer always to hide the girl? she wondered.

“On second thought,” Melanie said, “I’ll talk to the cop.”

Don’t be afraid, said the doctor before leaving her—but she was afraid, and insisted she meet with the police officer in Arthur’s room.

Poor Arthur.
I’m Meg Miller
, she had said to him, exploding his fifteen-year certainty. And all he could do was buzz for a nurse to rush Melanie away to the ER. Then two hours of tests and scans to see if the bruise to her stomach might have caused any damage to the fetus (unlikely) and to see if she had a concussion (she did, though it was minor). They took her blood to check for some other stuff the nurse had rattled off—and all the while, Arthur waited, because he had no choice.

So now she would speak with an officer, but Arthur would get to hear it all.

The officer was a stocky man with thick arms and almost no neck. She imagined he could be tough if he had to. They formed a triangle—she and Officer Bauer on chairs, and Arthur in his bed, raised almost to a sitting position. Sometime in the past two hours, he had put on a blue golf shirt and combed his white hair.

“I want to be sure I have this right,” said the officer, after Melanie had laid out the basic and amazing facts of her whereabouts these past fifteen years. “You’re telling me that you’re Meg Miller, daughter of Ramsey and Allison.”

The officer had made her nervous at first, but that word the doctor had used—
safe house
—had made her stomach burn. She was through with hiding. She wanted the opposite of hiding.

“Yes, sir.”

“And that since 1991 you’ve been living in West Virginia with your aunt and uncle.”

“Yes.”

“As part of the witness protection program.”

“Yes, sir.”

“My, my,” Arthur murmured, and the officer shot him a look. “Sorry.”

“And now you’ve come back to Silver Bay to try and find your father,” the officer said.

“That’s right.”

Officer Bauer jotted a few notes into his notebook. “Why?”

“I’m pregnant,” she said, “and I don’t want my baby to grow up afraid.”

The officer glanced down at Melanie’s body, then back at her face. “Tell me what happened this morning.”

So she told him about leaving the hotel room, getting slammed up against the door, the breathy voice in her ear, the man’s fast exit.

“Do you know who it was?” he asked.